


She dealt her pretty words like Blades

by MercuryGray



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Missing Scene, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: Fresh from angering Amy, Laurie Laurence is reconsidering the roles he plays, both onstage and off.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 6
Kudos: 226





	She dealt her pretty words like Blades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/gifts).



> She dealt her pretty words like Blades—  
> How glittering they shone—  
> And every One unbared a Nerve  
> Or wantoned with a Bone—  
> \- Emily Dickinson
> 
> Done for a prompt on tumblr for the fabulous jamesknoxpolka/tortoiseshells to use the phrase "How nice of you to take time out of your grievance to mock me."

Laurie was not in the mood for dancing.

It was evening, and he was once more amongst his tribe, all the beribboned and bewigged denizens of the American colony at just one more of their endless parties, struggling to see and be seen. His people! If there was ever a membership he disliked more, he did not know it. What a far cry from that night at the Gardiners, when he and Jo had danced like demons on the porch, one riot of movement and laughter that had never, in all their various riots, been matched since, and Meg had twisted her ankle and had to be brought home.

The memory hurt to think on; Jo was now lost to him, and would never reappear at a party like this one, much as he might have wished her to, a vision in blue with sapphires at her ears like a dancing princess in one of her plays. But Jo had never played her princesses - and that was the trouble, wasn’t it? Those were always Meg and Amy’s roles.

Someone behind him was introducing the room to a new arrival, and his ears pricked at the sound “-March, you know. Her niece, Amy.”

His eye searched the room until he found her - sitting with Aunt March, as pretty as a queen, and just as remote. What a come-up this was for a sitting room actress - her throne was now real gilt, and not a kitchen chair with the drape thrown over it.

“What a fine dress!”

Yes, it was fine - knowing little about women’s clothes, he did know that. He remembered, now, that Jo had told him Amy had wept after that party over being left out, and went on about her fine feet. Well, Amy was not weeping now, nor anyone making complaints about the color of her dancing shoes - but she was not dancing, either, and not, he thought, by choice. (He knew her moods as well as any of them, but several months in Europe, it seemed, had made her circumspect. Her frown did not reach quite so deep, though it still pulled around her eyes.) 

“Don’t let that fool you - Old Miss March has money, but her people are poor as churchmice. I’ve told Daniel and his friends not to dance with her - I’d hate for her to get ideas.”

Oh, hell. It had been a week since his drunken misadventure, and the effects, it seemed, were still being felt. A regular Rodrigo he had been, shouting all those things. And now poor Amy was paying for it.

He had realized in Europe how much he missed those plays, but not because he loved the thrill of performance, though a room of rapt children could bring him joy. No, he loved the roles - the gallant knight, riding in on his faithful steed with his squire at hand to save the day, even if the faithful steed were only the old pony and his squire Brooke, admonishing a return to declensions and the higher realms of algebra when the deed was done. And there was the heart of the thing, the root of all his current woes. Jo had preferred to play her own knight, the fierce Amazon defending her homeland against all comers. None of the March girls had ever really needed saving, when it came to it - but Amy! Amy would take help, if it were offered, a concession Jo had never made.

Laurie’s mind was made up; Rodrigo he was not. He sharpened his gloves like a knight adjusting a visor and strode out to do battle with prevailing public opinion. If Amy March was a fortune-hunter, then let her dance with foolish, rich young Mr. Laurence and let the gossips dine on that.

“A dance, ma'amselle?” He offered her his hand and she, pressed for any alternative, took it. (He could almost hear the room gasping behind him in shock - and her frown pulled a little deeper, just for him.)

“Oh, thank you,” she said, as sharply as she could as they pulled into the figure, “for taking time out of your grief again to mock me.”

She was, he realized, like one of her sister’s heroines, prepared to do battle in her party dress - and Laurie realized he loved her all the more for it. “No mock intended,” he said, and sincerity was in his every word.

**Author's Note:**

> I, like many other readers of Alcott, have always had a problem with Laurie and Amy. Their romance always seems too quick, too contrived - a patched up ending to make sure the good end happily and the bad unhappily, to paraphrase Mr. Wilde. And while Greta Gerwig's film did a great job of covering a lot of territory on Amy's end of the equation, there was less there, I felt, about Laurie, and how he's able to move on from Jo. I needed one more scene - just one! - where Laurie begins to realize what it is he loves about Amy that doesn't just make her a secondplace prize for not winning Jo.
> 
> So. This is my attempt.


End file.
